[SPOILER] Easy questions??

[leimeisei]

At the advice of Buzzerblog I watched Millionaire today. Yes the guy did really well, he will be at the $500,000 question when he continues tomorrow. But am I the only one who found his questions to be ridiculously easy? I knew all of the Round 1 questions except the Czar one. And that's unusual because usually I only know the answers to a couple questions, maybe 4 or 5 on a good day.

I don't know if it's a desperate attempt for ratings to get a guy up to the top prize or what but it just feels fake. Like almost as fake as when Sam Murray won the million. It's kinda the same way I felt about Deal or No Deal: if the only way someone can win the top prize is when you manipulate the the rules of the game, then what's the point?

[FinalAnswer19]

I'm glad they're getting easier. They've been ridiculousness impossible pretty much since Nancy Christy. Deal or No Deal was just ridiculous at the end of its NBC run. 10+ cases with $1 Million? Come on, might as well just give the contestant one million dollars and save the time and money of filming the episodes.

I think Millionaire has a little wiggle room. I've thought for years that the questions need to be easier. Besides, I don't think their format is completely helping their ratings in the first place.

[Deleted]

This might just be something brief to help boost ratings. If the questions are getting a little more easier, I find no harm in doing that. Besides, a question is either easy or difficult based on what you know.

[FinalAnswer19]

Good point, woffan2008. As Chris Tarrant would say, "They're only easy if you know the answers!"

[zowayix]

I like how the questions are becoming a little easier, and I hope they stay that way.

Look at the original ABC Millionaire: 9 people won in two years. At one point they even put in a progressive jackpot after there had been several months without a winner.

The questions started becoming much harder in the syndicated version, with only two winners for 9 years and counting. It certainly doesn't help that the formats have started becoming harder as well. And it might be just me, but there seems to be at least a small correlation (not necessarily causation) between lower ratings and harder questions.

Perhaps with the questions reverting to approximately the ABC millionaire difficulty, we'll finally get a "standard" winner since nine years, and I hope the show gets more popular as a result.

[RegisFan]

I think most of us have been in agreement for a while that the questions on syndicated "Millionaire" have been much too difficult for the last several years. Making the questions easier doesn't really cheapen the game, it just brings the difficulty down to the level where it really should have been all along. The syndication budget doesn't lend itself to lots of million dollar winners, but I feel like the game was getting too hard to hold the attention of the regular TV viewer week after week. Most people who aren't die hard fans probably grow weary of people consistently leaving the game before the exciting big money questions.

[btrent57]

One one side, I can see what leimeisei means, the questions do seem oddly easier than usual. On the other hand, the questions over the past couple of seasons seem to be harder than several of the previous seasons before. Is it just me?

[zowayix]

I think that the shift to the Clock Format and now the Shuffle Format definitely contributed to the difficulty of the game - the questions themselves might not be harder than in, say, 2007, but the difficulty of actually answering the questions becomes harder. So no, it's not just you.